Bible Commentaries

Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament

1 Samuel 1

Introduction

I. History of the People of Israel Under the Prophet Samuel - 1 Samuel 1-7

The call of Samuel to be the prophet and judge of Israel formed a turning-point in the history of the Old Testament kingdom of God. As theprophet of Jehovah, Samuel was to lead the people of Israel out of thetimes of the judges into those of the kings, and lay the foundation for aprosperous development of the monarchy. Consecrated like Samson as aNazarite from his mother's womb, Samuel accomplished the deliverance ofIsrael out of the power of the Philistines, which had been only commencedby Samson; and that not by the physical might of his arm, but by thespiritual power of his word and prayer, with which he led Israel back fromthe worship of dead idols to the Lord its God. And whilst as one of thejudges, among whom he classes himself in 1 Samuel 12:11, he brought theoffice of judge to a close, and introduced the monarchy; as a prophet, helaid the foundation of the prophetic office, inasmuch as he was the fist tonaturalize it, so to speak, in Israel, and develope it into a power thatcontinued henceforth to exert the strongest influence, side by side with thepriesthood and monarchy, upon the development of the covenant nationand kingdom of God. For even if there were prophets before the time ofSamuel, who revealed the will of the Lord at times to the nation, they onlyappeared sporadically, without exerting any lasting influence upon thenational life; whereas, from the time of Samuel onwards, the prophetssustained and fostered the spiritual life of the congregation, and were theinstruments through whom the Lord made known His purposes to thenation and its rulers. To exhibit in its origin and growth the new order of things which Samuelintroduced, or rather the deliverance which the Lord sent to His peoplethrough this servant of His, the prophetic historian goes back to the timeof Samuel's birth, and makes us acquainted not only with the religiouscondition of the nation, but also with the political oppression under whichit was suffering at the close of the period of the judges, and during thehigh-priesthood of Eli. At the time when the pious parents of Samuel weregoing year by year to the house of God at Shiloh to worship and offersacrifice before the Lord, the house of God was being profaned by theabominable conduct of Eli's sons (1 Samuel 1-2). When Samuel was called to bethe prophet of Jehovah, Israel lost the ark of the covenant, the soul of itssanctuary, in the war with the Philistines (1 Samuel 3-4). And it was not tillafter the nation had been rendered willing to put away its strange gods andworship Jehovah alone, through the influence of Samuel's exertions asprophet, that the faithful covenant God gave it, in answer to Samuel'sintercession, a complete victory over the Philistines (1 Samuel 7). In accordancewith these three prominent features, the history of the judicial life ofSamuel may be divided into three sections, viz.: 1 Samuel 1-2; 3-6; 7.


Verses 1-8

Samuel's pedigree. - 1 Samuel 1:1. His father was a man of Ramathaim-Zophim, on the mountains of Ephraim, and named Elkanah. Ramathaim-Zophim, which is only mentioned here, is the same place, according to 1 Samuel 1:3 (comp. with 1 Samuel 1:19 and 1 Samuel 2:11), which is afterwards called briefly ha-Ramah, i.e., the height. For since Elkanah of Ramathaim-Zophim went yearby year out of his city to Shiloh, to worship and sacrifice there, and afterhe had done this, returned to his house to Ramah (1 Samuel 1:19; 1 Samuel 2:11), therecan be no doubt that he was not only a native of Ramathaim-Zophim, butstill had his home there; so that Ramah, where his house was situated, isonly an abbreviated name for Ramathaim-Zophim.

(Note: The argument lately adduced by Valentiner in favour of thedifference between these two names, viz., that “examples are notwanting of a person being described according to his original descent,although his dwelling-place had been already changed,” and theinstance which he cites, viz., Judges 19:16, show that he has overlookedthe fact, that in the very passage which he quotes the temporarydwelling-place is actually mentioned along with the native town. Inthe case before us, on the contrary Ramathaim-Zophim is designated,by the use of the expression “from his city,” in 1 Samuel 1:3, as the placewhere Elkanah lived, and where “his house” (1 Samuel 1:19) was still standing.)

This Ramah (which is invariably written with the article, ha-Ramah), where Samuel was not only born (1 Samuel 1:19.), but lived, laboured, died (1 Samuel 7:17; 1 Samuel 15:34; 1 Samuel 16:13; 1 Samuel 19:18-19, 1 Samuel 19:22-23), and was buried (1 Samuel 25:1; 1 Samuel 28:3), is not a different place, as has been frequently assumed,

(Note: For the different views which have been held upon this point,see the article “Ramah,” by Pressel, in Herzog's Cyclopaedia.)

from the Ramah in Benjamin (Joshua 18:25), and is not to be sought for inRamleh near Joppa (v. Schubert, etc.), nor in Soba on the north-west ofJerusalem (Robinson, Pal. ii. p. 329), nor three-quarters of an hour to thenorth of Hebron (Wolcott, v. de Velde), nor anywhere else in the tribe ofEphraim, but is identical with Ramah of Benjamin, and was situated uponthe site of the present village of er-Râm, two hours to the north-west ofJerusalem, upon a conical mountain to the east of the Nablus road (see atJoshua 18:25). This supposition is neither at variance with the account in 1 Samuel 9-10 (see the commentary upon these chapters), nor with the statementthat Ramathaim-Zophim was upon the mountains of Ephraim, since themountains of Ephraim extended into the tribe-territory of Benjamin, as isindisputably evident from Judges 4:5, where Deborah the prophetess is saidto have dwelt between Ramah and Bethel in the mountains of Ephraim. The name Ramathaim-Zophim, i.e., “the two heights (of the) Zophites”appear to have been given to the town to distinguish it from otherRamah's, and to have been derived from the Levitical family of Zuph orZophai (see 1 Chronicles 6:26, 1 Chronicles 6:35), which emigrated thither from the tribe ofEphraim, and from which Elkanah was descended. The full name,therefore, is given here, in the account of the descent of Samuel's father;whereas in the further history of Samuel, where there was no longer thesame reason for giving it, the simple name Ramah is invariably used.

(Note: The fuller and more exact name, however, appears to havebeen still retained, and the use of it to have been revived after thecaptivity, in the Ῥαμαθέμ of 1 Macc. 11:34, for which the Codd. have Ῥαθαμεΐ́ν and Ῥαμαθαΐ́μ , and Josephus Ῥαμαθά , and inthe Arimathaea of the gospel history (Matthew 27:57). “For the opinionthat this Ramathaim is a different place from the city of Samuel, andis to be sought for in the neighbourhood of Lydda, which Robinsonadvocates (Pal. iii. p. 41ff.), is a hasty conclusion, drawn from theassociation of Ramathaim with Lydda in 1 Macc. 11:34, - the verysame conclusion which led the author of the Onomasticon to transferthe city of Samuel to the neighbourhood of Lydda” (Grimm on 1Macc. 11:34).

The connection between Zophim and Zuph is confirmed by the fact thatElkanah's ancestor, Zuph, is called Zophai in 1 Chronicles 6:26, and Zuph orZiph in 1 Chronicles 6:35. Zophim therefore signifies the descendants of Zuphor Zophai, from which the name “land of Zuph,” in 1 Samuel 9:5, was alsoderived (see the commentary on this passage). The tracing back ofElkanah's family through four generations to Zuph agrees with the familyregisters in 1 Chron 6, where the ancestors of Elkanah are mentionedtwice, - first of all in the genealogy of the Kohathites (1 Chronicles 6:26), and then inthat of Heman, the leader of the singers, a grandson of Samuel (1 Chronicles 6:33), - except that the name Elihu, Tohu, and Zuph, are given as Eliab, Nahath,and Zophai in the first instance, and Eliel, Toah, and Ziph (according tothe Chethibh) in the second, - various readings, such as often occur in thedifferent genealogies, and are to be explained partly from the use ofdifferent forms for the same name, and partly from their synonymousmeanings. Tohu and Toah, which occur in Arabic, with the meaning topress or sink in, are related in meaning to (nachath) or (nuach), to sink orsettle down.

From these genealogies in the Chronicles, we learn that Samuel wasdescended from Kohath, the son of Levi, and therefore was a Levite. It isno valid objection to the correctness of this view, that his Levitical descentis never mentioned, or that Elkanah is called an Ephrathite. The former ofthese can very easily be explained from the fact, that Samuel's work as areformer, which is described in this book, did not rest upon his Leviticaldescent, but simply upon the call which he had received from God, as theprophetic office was not confined to any particular class, like that ofpriest, but was founded exclusively upon the divine calling andendowment with the Spirit of God. And the difficulty which Nägelsbachexpresses in Herzog's Cycl., viz., that “as it was stated of those twoLevites (Judges 17:7; Judges 19:1), that they lived in Bethlehem and Ephraim, butonly after they had been expressly described as Levites, we should haveexpected to find the same in the case of Samuel's father,” is removed bythe simple fact, that in the case of both those Levites it was of greatimportance, so far as the accounts which are given of them are concerned,that their Levitical standing should be distinctly mentioned, as is clearlyshown by Judges 17:10, Judges 17:13, and Judges 19:18; whereas in the case of Samuel, as wehave already observed, his Levitical descent had no bearing upon the callwhich he received from the Lord. The word Ephrathite does not belong, sofar as the grammatical construction is concerned, either to Zuph orElkanah, but to “a certain man,” the subject of the principal clause, andsignifies an Ephraimite, as in Judges 12:5 and 1 Kings 11:26, and not aninhabitant of Ephratah, i.e., a Bethlehemite, as in 1 Samuel 17:12 and 1:2; for in both these passages the word is more precisely defined by theaddition of the expression “of Bethlehem-Judah,” whereas in this verse theexplanation is to be found in the expression “of Mount Ephraim.” Elkanahthe Levite is called an Ephraimite, because, so far as his civil standing wasconcerned, he belonged to the tribe of Ephraim, just as the Levite in Judges 17:7 is described as belonging to the family of Judah. The Levites werereckoned as belonging to those tribes in the midst of which they lived, sothat there were Judaean Levites, Ephraimitish Levites, and so on (seeHengstenberg, Diss. vol. ii. p. 50). It by no means follows, however, from the application of this term toElkanah, that Ramathaim-Zophim formed part of the tribe-territory ofEphraim, but simply that Elkanah's family was incorporated in this tribe,and did not remove till afterwards to Ramah in the tribe of Benjamin. Onthe division of the land, dwelling-places were allotted to the Levites of thefamily of Kohath, in the tribes of Ephraim, Dan, and Manasseh (Joshua 21:5, Joshua 21:21.). Still less is there anything at variance with the Leviticaldescent of Samuel, as Thenius maintains, in the fact that he was dedicatedto the Lord by his mother's vow, for he was not dedicated to the service ofJehovah generally through this view, but was set apart to a lifelong serviceat the house of God as a Nazarite (1 Samuel 1:11, 1 Samuel 1:22); whereas other Levites werenot required to serve till their twenty-fifth year, and even then had not toperform an uninterrupted service at the sanctuary. On the other hand, the Levitical descent of Samuel receives a very strongconfirmation from his father's name. All the Elkanahs that we meet with inthe Old Testament, with the exception of the one mentioned in 2 Chronicles 28:7, whose genealogy is unknown, can be proved to have been Levites;and most of them belong to the family of Korah, from which Samuel wasalso descended (see Simonis, Onomast. p. 493). This is no doubtconnected in some way with the meaning of the name Elkanah, the manwhom God has bought or acquired; since such a name was peculiarlysuitable to the Levites, whom the Lord had set apart for service at thesanctuary, in the place of the first-born of Israel, whom He had sanctifiedto himself when He smote the first-born of Egypt (Numbers 3:13., Numbers 3:44.; seeHengstenberg, ut sup.).

1 Samuel 1:2-3

Elkanah had two wives, Hannah (grace or gracefulness) andPeninnah (coral), the latter of whom was blessed with children, whereasthe first was childless. He went with his wives year by year (ימימה מיּמים, as in Exodus 13:10; Judges 11:40), according to theinstructions of the law (Exodus 34:23; Deuteronomy 16:16), to the tabernacle at Shiloh(Joshua 18:1), to worship and sacrifice to the Lord of hosts. “JehovahZebaoth” is an abbreviation of “Jehovah Elohe Zebaoth,” or הצּבאות אלהי יהוה; and the connection of Zebaothwith Jehovah is not to be regarded as the construct state, nor is Zebaoth tobe taken as a genitive dependent upon Jehovah. This is not only confirmedby the occurrence of such expressions as “Elohim Zebaoth” (Psalm 59:6; Psalm 80:5, Psalm 80:8; Psalm 80:15, 20; Psalm 84:9) and “Adonai Zebaoth” (Isaiah 10:16), but also by thecircumstance that Jehovah, as a proper name, cannot be construed with agenitive. The combination “Jehovah Zebaoth” is rather to be taken as anellipsis, where the general term Elohe (God of), which is implied in theword Jehovah, is to be supplied in thought (see Hengstenberg, Christol. i. p. 375, English translation); for frequently as this expression occurs,especially in the case of the prophets, Zebaoth is never used alone in theOld Testament as one of the names of God. It is in the Septuagint that theword is first met with occasionally as a proper name ( Σαβαώθ ),viz., throughout the whole of the first book of Samuel, very frequently inIsaiah, and also in Zechariah 13:2. In other passages, the word is translatedeither κύριος , or θεὸς τῶν δυνάμεων , or παντοκράτωρ ; whilst the other Greek versions use the more definitephrase κύριος στρατιῶν instead.

This expression, which was not used as a divine name until the age ofSamuel, had its roots in Genesis 2:1, although the title itself was unknown inthe Mosaic period, and during the times of the judges. Itrepresented Jehovah as ruler over the heavenly hosts (i.e., the angels,according to Genesis 32:2, and the stars, according to Isaiah 40:26), who arecalled the “armies” of Jehovah in Psalm 103:21; Psalm 148:2; but we are not tounderstand it as implying that the stars were supposed to be inhabited byangels, as Gesenius (Thes. s. v.) maintains, since there is not the slightesttrace of any such notion in the whole of the Old Testament. It is simplyapplied to Jehovah as the God of the universe, who governs all the powersof heaven, both visible and invisible, as He rules in heaven and on earth. Itcannot even be proved that the epithet Lord, or God of Zebaoth, referschiefly and generally to the sun, moon, and stars, on account of their beingso peculiarly adapted, through their visible splendour, to keep alive theconsciousness of the omnipotence and glory of God (Hengstenberg on Psalm 24:10). For even though the expression צבאם (their host), in Genesis 2:1,refers to the heavens only, since it is only to the heavens (vid., Isaiah 40:26),and never to the earth, that a “host” is ascribed, and in this particularpassage it is probably only the stars that are to be thought of, the creationof which had already been mentioned in Genesis 1:14.; yet we find the ideaof an army of angels introduced in the history of Jacob (Genesis 32:2-3),where Jacob calls the angels of God who appeared to him the “camp ofGod,” and also in the blessing of Moses (Deuteronomy 33:2), where the “tenthousands of saints” ((Kodesh)) are not stars, but angels, or heavenlyspirits; whereas the fighting of the stars against Sisera in the song ofDeborah probably refers to a natural phenomenon, by which God hadthrown the enemy into confusion, and smitten them before the Israelites(see at Judges 5:20). We must also bear in mind, that whilst on the one hand the tribes of Israel,as they came out of Egypt, are called Zebaoth Jehovah, “the hosts ofJehovah” (Exodus 7:4; Exodus 12:41), on the other hand the angel of the Lord, whenappearing in front of Jericho in the form of a warrior, made himself knownto Joshua as “the prince of the army of Jehovah,” i.e., of the angelic hosts. And it is in this appearance of the heavenly leader of the people of God tothe earthly leader of the hosts of Israel, as the prince of the angelic hosts,not only promising him the conquest of Jericho, but through themiraculous overthrow of the walls of this strong bulwark of theCanaanitish power, actually giving him at the same time a practical proofthat the prince of the angelic hosts was fighting for Israel, that we have thematerial basis upon which the divine epithet “Jehovah God of hosts” wasfounded, even though it was not introduced immediately, but only at alater period, when the Lord began to form His people Israel into akingdom, by which all the kingdoms of the heathen were to be overcome. It is certainly not without significance that this title is given to God for thefirst time in these books, which contain an account of the founding of thekingdom, and (as Auberlen has observed) that it was by Samuel's mother,the pious Hannah, when dedicating her son to the Lord, and prophesyingof the king and anointed of the Lord in her song of praise (1 Samuel 2:10),that this name was employed for the first time, and that God wasaddressed in prayer as “Jehovah of hosts” (1 Samuel 1:11). Consequently, if thisname of God goes hand in hand with the prophetic announcement and theactual establishment of the monarchy in Israel, its origin cannot beattributed to any antagonism to Sabaeism, or to the hostility of piousIsraelites to the worship of the stars, which was gaining increasing groundin the age of David, as Hengstenberg (on Psalm 24:10) and Strauss (on Zephaniah 2:9) maintain; to say nothing of the fact, that there is no historicalfoundation for such an assumption at all. It is a much more naturalsupposition, that when the invisible sovereignty of Jehovah received avisible manifestation in the establishment of the earthly monarchy, thesovereignty of Jehovah, if it did possess and was to possess any reality atall, necessarily claimed to be recognised in its all-embracing power andglory, and that in the title “God of (the heavenly hosts” the fittingexpression was formed for the universal government of the God-king ofIsrael, - a title which not only serves as a bulwark against any eclipsing ofthe invisible sovereignty of God by the earthly monarchy in Israel, butoverthrew the vain delusion of the heathen, that the God of Israel wassimply the national deity of that particular nation.

(Note: This name of God was therefore held up before the people ofthe Lord even in their war-songs and paeans of victory, but still moreby the prophets, as a banner under which Israel was to fight and toconquer the world. Ezekiel is the only prophet who does not use it,simply because he follows the Pentateuch so strictly in his style. Andit is not met with in the book of Job, just because the theocraticconstitution of the Israelitish nation is never referred to in theproblem of that book.)

The remark introduced in 1 Samuel 1:3 , “and there were the two sons of Eli,Hophni and Phinehas, priests of the Lord,” i.e., performing the duties ofthe priesthood, serves as a preparation for what follows. This reason forthe remark sufficiently explains why the sons of Eli only are mentionedhere, and not Eli himself, since, although the latter still presided over thesanctuary as high priest, he was too old to perform the duties connectedwith the offering of sacrifice. The addition made by the lxx, Ἡλὶ καὶ , is an arbitrary interpolation, occasioned by a misapprehensionof the reason for mentioning the sons of Eli.

1 Samuel 1:4-5

And it came to pass, the day, and he offered sacrifice” (for,“on which he offered sacrifice”), that he gave to Peninnah and her childrenportions of the flesh of the sacrifice at the sacrificial meal; but to Hannahhe gave אפּים אחת מגה, “one portion for twopersons,” i.e., a double portion, because he loved her, but Jehovah hadshut up her womb: i.e., he gave it as an expression of his love to her, toindicate by a sign, “thou art as dear to me as if thou hadst born me a child”(O. v. Gerlach). This explanation of the difficult word אפּים, ofwhich very different interpretations have been given, is the one adoptedby Tanchum Hieros., and is the only one which can be grammaticallysustained, or yields an appropriate sense. The meaning face (facies) isplaced beyond all doubt by Genesis 3:19 and other passages; and the use ofלאפּי as a synonym for לפני in 1 Samuel 25:23, alsoestablishes the meaning “person,” since פּנים is used in thissense in 2 Samuel 17:11. It is true that there are no other passages that can be adduced to prove thatthe singular אף was also used in this sense; but as the word wasemployed promiscuously in both singular and plural in the derivativesense of anger, there is no reason for denying that the singular may alsohave been employed in the sense of face ( πρόσωπον ). Thecombination of אפּים with אחת מגה in theabsolute state is supported by many other examples of the same kind (seeEwald, §287, h). The meaning double has been correctly adopted in theSyriac, whereas Luther follows the tristis of the Vulgate, and renders theword traurig, or sad. But this meaning, which Fr. Böttcher has lately takenunder his protection, cannot be philologically sustained either by theexpression פניך נפלוּ (Genesis 4:6), or by Daniel 11:20,or in any other way. אף and אפּים do indeed signifyanger, but anger and sadness are two very different ideas. But whenBöttcher substitutes “angrily or unwillingly” for sadly, the incongruitystrikes you at once: “he gave her a portion unwillingly, because he lovedher!” For the custom of singling out a person by giving double or evenlarge portions, see the remarks on Genesis 43:34.

1 Samuel 1:6

And her adversary (Peninnah) also provoked her withprovocation, to irritate her.” The גּם is placed before the nounbelonging to the verb, to add force to the meaning. רעם (Hiphil),to excite, put into (inward) commotion, not exactly to make angry.

1 Samuel 1:7

So did he (Elkanah) from year to year (namely give to Hannah adouble portion at the sacrificial meal), as often as she went up to the houseof the Lord. So did she (Peninnah) provoke her (Hannah), so that shewept, and did not eat.” The two כּן correspond to one another. Just as Elkanah showed his love to Hannah at every sacrificial festival, sodid Peninnah repeat her provocation, the effect of which was that Hannahgave vent to her grief in tears, and did not eat.

1 Samuel 1:8

Elkanah sought to comfort her in her grief by the affectionateappeal: “Am I not better to thee (טּוב, i.e., dearer) than tenchildren?” Ten is a found number for a large number.


Verses 9-11

Hannah's prayer for a son. - 1 Samuel 1:9-11. “After the eating at Shiloh, and afterthe drinking,” i.e., after the sacrificial meal was over, Hannah rose up witha troubled heart, to pour out her grief in prayer before God, whilst Eli wassitting before the door-posts of the palace of Jehovah, and vowed thisvow: “Lord of Zebaoth, if Thou regardest the distress of Thy maiden, andgivest men's seed to Thy maiden, I will give him to the Lord all his lifelong, and no razor shall come upon his head.” The choice of the infinitiveabsolute שׁתה instead of the infinitive construct is analogous tothe combination of two nouns, the first of which is defined by a suffix, andthe second written absolutely (see e.g., וזמרת עזּי, Exodus 15:2; cf. 2 Samuel 23:5, and Ewald, §339, b). The words from ועלי onwards to נפשׁ מרת form two circumstantial clausesinserted in the main sentence, to throw light upon the situation and thefurther progress of the affair. The tabernacle is called “the palace of Jehovah” (cf. 1 Samuel 2:22), not onaccount of the magnificence and splendour of the building, but as thedwelling-place of Jehovah of hosts, the God-king of Israel, as in Psalm 5:8,etc. מזוּזה is probably a porch, which had been placed beforethe curtain that formed the entranced into the holy place, when thetabernacle was erected permanently at Shiloh. נפשׁ מרת, troubled in soul (cf. 2 Kings 4:27). תבכּה וּבכה is really subordinate to תּתפּלּל, in the sense of “weeping muchduring her prayer.” The depth of her trouble was also manifest in thecrowding together of the words in which she poured out the desire of herheart before God: “If Thou wilt look upon the distress of Thine handmaid,and remember and not forget,” etc. “Men's seed” (semen virorum), i.e., amale child. אנשׁים is the plural of אישׁ, a man (seeEwald, §186-7), from the root אשׁ, which combines the two ideas offire, regarded as life, and giving life and firmness. The vow contained twopoints:(1) she would give the son she had prayed for to be the Lord's all the daysof his life, i.e., would dedicate him to the Lord for a lifelong service, which,as we have already observed at 1 Samuel 1:1, the Levites as such were not boundto perform; and (2) no razor should come upon his head, by which he wasset apart as a Nazarite for his whole life (see at Numbers 6:2., and Judges 13:5). The Nazarite, again, was neither bound to perform a lifelong servicenor to remain constantly at the sanctuary, but was simply consecrated fora certain time, whilst the sacrifice offered at his release from the vowshadowed forth a complete surrender to the Lord. The second point,therefore, added a new condition to the first, and one which was notnecessarily connected with it, but which first gave the true consecration tothe service of the Lord at the sanctuary. At the same time, the qualificationof Samuel for priestly functions, such as the offering of sacrifice, canneither be deduced from the first point in the vow, nor yet from thesecond. If, therefore, at a later period, when the Lord had called him to be aprophet, and had thereby placed him at the head of the nation, Samuelofficiated at the presentation of sacrifice, he was not qualified to performthis service either as a Levite or as a lifelong Nazarite, but performed itsolely by virtue of his prophetic calling.


Verses 12-14

But when Hannah prayed much (i.e., a long time) before the Lord, and Elinoticed her mouth, and, as she was praying inwardly, only saw her lipsmove, but did not hear her voice, he thought she was drunken, and calledout to her: “How long dost thou show thyself drunken? put away thywine from thee,” i.e., go away and sleep off thine intoxication (cf. 1 Samuel 25:37). לבּהּ על מדבּרת, lit. speaking to her heart. על is not to be confounded with אל (Genesis 24:45), but has thesubordinate idea of a comforting address, as in Genesis 34:3, etc.


Verse 15-16

Hannah answered: “No, my lord, I am a woman of an oppressed spirit. Ihave not drunk wine and strong drink, but have poured out my soul beforethe Lord (see Psalm 42:5). Do not count thine handmaid for a worthlesswoman, for I have spoken hitherto out of great sighing and grief.” לפני נתן, to set or lay before a person, i.e., generally to give aperson up to another; here to place him in thought in the position ofanother, i.e., to take him for another. שׂיה, meditation, inwardmovement of the heart, sighing.


Verse 17

Eli then replied: “Go in peace, and the God of Israel give (grant) thyrequest (שׁלתך for שׁאלתך), which thou hastasked of Him.” This word of the high priest was not a prediction, but apious wish, which God in His grace most gloriously fulfilled.


Verse 18

Hannah then went her way, saying, “Let thine handmaid find grace in thineeyes,” i.e., let me be honoured with thy favour and thine intercession, andwas strengthened and comforted by the word of the high priest, whichassured her that her prayer would be heard by God; and she did eat, “andher countenance was no more,” sc., troubled and sad, as it had been before. This may be readily supplied from the context, through which the wordcountenance (פּנים) acquires the sense of a troubledcountenance, as in Job 9:27.


Verse 19-20

Samuel's birth, and dedication to the Lord. - 1 Samuel 1:19, 1 Samuel 1:20. The next morningElkanah returned home to Ramah (see at 1 Samuel 1:1) with his two wives, havingfirst of all worshipped before the Lord; after which he knew his wifeHannah, and Jehovah remembered her, i.e., heard her prayer. “In therevolution of the days,” i.e., of the period of her conception andpregnancy, Hannah conceived and bare a son, whom she called Samuel;“for (she said) I have asked him of the Lord.” The name שׁמוּאל ( Σαμουήλ , lxx) is not formed from שׁמוּ = שׁם and אל, name of God (Ges. Thes. p. 1434), but from אל שׁמוּע,heard of God, a Deo exauditus, with an elision of the ע (see Ewald, §275,a., Not. 3); and the words “because I have asked him of the Lord” are notan etymological explanation of the name, but an exposition founded uponthe facts. Because Hannah had asked him of Jehovah, she gave him thename, “the God-heard,” as a memorial of the hearing of her prayer.


Verse 21-22

When Elkanah went up again with his family to Shiloh, to present hisyearly sacrifice and his vow to the Lord, Hannah said to her husband thatshe would not go up till she had weaned the boy, and could present him tothe Lord, that he might remain there for ever. הימים זבח, the sacrifice of the days, i.e., which he was accustomed to offer onthe days when he went up to the sanctuary; really, therefore, the annualsacrifice. It follows from the expression “and his vow,” that Elkanah hadalso vowed a vow to the Lord, in case the beloved Hannah should have ason. The vow referred to the presentation of a sacrifice. And this explainsthe combination of את־נדרו with לזבּח.

(Note: The lxx add to τὰς εὐχὰς αὐτοῦ the clause καὶ πάσας τὰς δεκάτας τῆς γῆς αὐτοῦ (“and allthe tithes of his land”). This addition is just as arbitrary as thealteration of the singular נדרו into the plural τὰς εὐχὰς αὐτοῦ . The translator overlooked the special reference of the wordנדרו to the child desired by Elkanah, and imagined - probablywith Deuteronomy 12:26-27 in his mind, where vows are ordered to be paid atthe sanctuary in connection with slain offerings and sacrificial meals - that when Elkanah made his annual journey to the tabernacle hewould discharge all his obligations to God, and consequently would payhis tithes. The genuineness of this additional clause cannot besustained by an appeal to Josephus (Ant. v. 10, 3), who also has δεκάτας τε ἔφερον , for Josephus wrote his work uponthe basis of the Alexandrian version. This statement of Josephus isonly worthy of notice, inasmuch as it proves the incorrectness of theconjecture of Thenius, that the allusion to the tithes wasintentionally dropped out of the Hebrew text by copyists, whoregarded Samuel's Levitical descent as clearly established by 1 Chronicles 6:7-13 and 1 Chronicles 6:19-21. For Josephus (l. c. §2) expressly describes Elkanahas a Levite, and takes no offence at the offering of tithes attributedto him in the Septuagint, simply because he was well acquainted withthe law, and knew that the Levites had to pay to the priests a tenthof the tithes that they received from the other tribes, as a heave-offering of Jehovah (Numbers 18:26.; cf. Nehemiah 10:38). Consequently thepresentation of tithe on the part of Elkanah, if it were really wellfounded in the biblical text, would not furnish any argument againsthis Levitical descent.)

Weaning took place very late among the Israelites. According to 2 Macc. 7:28, the Hebrew mothers were in the habit of suckling their children forthree years. When the weaning had taken place, Hannah would bring herson up to the sanctuary, to appear before the face of the Lord, and remainthere for ever, i.e., his whole life long. The Levites generally were onlyrequired to perform service at the sanctuary from their twenty-fifth totheir fiftieth year (Numbers 8:24-25); but Samuel was to be presented to theLord immediately after his weaning had taken place, and to remain at thesanctuary for ever, i.e., to belong entirely to the Lord. To this end he wasto receive his training at the sanctuary, that at the very earliest waking upof his spiritual susceptibilities he might receive the impressions of thesacred presence of God. There is no necessity, therefore, to understand theword גּמל (wean) as including what followed the weaning,namely, the training of the child up to his thirteenth year (Seb. Schmidt),on the ground that a child of three years old could only have been a burdento Eli: for the word never has this meaning, not even in 1 Kings 11:20; and,as O. v. Gerlach has observed, his earliest training might have beensuperintended by one of the women who worshipped at the door of thetabernacle (1 Samuel 2:22).


Verse 23

Elkanah expressed his approval of Hannah's decision, and added, “only theLord establish His word,” i.e., fulfil it. By “His word” we are not tounderstand some direct revelation from God respecting the birth anddestination of Samuel, as the Rabbins suppose, but in all probability theword of Eli the high priest to Hannah, “The God of Israel grant thypetition” (1 Samuel 1:17), which might be regarded by the parents of Samuel afterhis birth as a promise from Jehovah himself, and therefore might naturallyexcite the wish and suggest the prayer that the Lord would graciously fulfilthe further hopes, which the parents cherished in relation to the son whomthey had dedicated to the Lord by a vow. The paraphrase of דּברו in the rendering given by the lxx, τὸ ἐξελθὸν ὲκ τοῦ στόματός σου , is the subjective view of the translatorhimself, and does not warrant an emendation of the original text.


Verse 24-25

As soon as the boy was weaned, Hannah brought him, although still aנער, i.e., a tender boy, to Shiloh, with a sacrifice of three oxen, anephah of meal, and a pitcher of wine, and gave him up to Eli when the ox(bullock) had been slain, i.e., offered in sacrifice as a burnt-offering. Thestriking circumstance that, according to 1 Samuel 1:24, Samuel's parents broughtthree oxen with them to Shiloh, and yet in 1 Samuel 1:25 the ox (הפּר)alone is spoken of as being slain (or sacrificed), may be explained verysimply on the supposition that in 1 Samuel 1:25 that particular sacrifice is referredto, which was associated with the presentation of the boy, that is to say,the burnt-offering by virtue of which the boy was consecrated to the Lordas a spiritual sacrifice for a lifelong service at His sanctuary, whereas theother two oxen served as the yearly festal offering, i.e., the burnt-offeringsand thank-offerings which Elkanah presented year by year, and thepresentation of which the writer did not think it needful to mention,simply because it followed partly from 1 Samuel 1:3 and partly from the Mosaiclaw.

(Note: The interpretation of שׁלשׁה בּפרים by ἐν μόσχῳ τριετίζοντι (lxx), upon which Thenius would found analteration of the text, is proved to be both arbitrary and wrong by thefact that the translators themselves afterwards mention the θυσία , which Elkanah brought year by year, and the μόσχος ,and consequently represent him as offering at least two animals, indirect opposition to the μόσχῳ τριετίζοντι . This discrepancycannot be removed by the assertion that in 1 Samuel 1:24 the sacrificialanimal intended for the dedication of the boy is the only onementioned; and the presentation of the regular festal sacrifice is takenfor granted, for an ephah of meal would not be the proper quantity tobe offered in connection with a single ox, since, according to the lawin Numbers 15:8-9, only three-tenths of an ephah of meal were requiredwhen an ox was presented as a burnt-offering or slain offering. Thepresentation of an ephah of meal presupposes the offering of threeoxen, and therefore shows that in 1 Samuel 1:24 the materials are mentionedfor all the sacrifices that Elkanah was about to offer.)


Verses 26-28

When the boy was presented, his mother made herself known to the highpriest as the woman who had previously prayed to the Lord at that place(see 1 Samuel 1:11.), and said, “For this child I prayed; and the Lord hathgranted me my request which I asked of Him: therefore I also make himone asked of the Lord all the days that he liveth; he is asked of the Lord.וגם אנכי: I also; et ego vicissim (Cler.). השׁאיל, to leta person ask, to grant his request, to give him what he asks (Exodus 12:36),signifies here to make a person “asked” (שׁאוּל). The meaning tolend, which the lexicons give to the word both here and Exodus 12:36, has noother support than the false rendering of the lxx, and is altogetherunsuitable both in the one and the other. Jehovah had not lent the son toHannah, but had given him (see 1 Samuel 1:11); still less could a man lend his son tothe Lord. The last clause of 1 Samuel 1:28, “and he worshipped the Lord there,”refers to Elkanah, qui in votum Hannae consenserat, and not to Samuel. Ona superficial glance, the plural ישׁתּחווּ, which is found insome Codd., and in the Vulgate, Syriac, and Arabic, appears the moresuitable; but when we look more closely at the connection in which theclause stands, we see at once that it does not wind up the foregoingaccount, but simply introduces the closing act of the transference ofSamuel. Consequently the singular is perfectly appropriate; andnotwithstanding the fact that the subject is not mentioned, the allusion toSamuel is placed beyond all doubt. When Hannah had given up her son tothe high priest, his father Elkanah first of all worshipped before the Lordin the sanctuary, and then Hannah worshipped in the song of praise,which follows in 1 Samuel 2:1-10.

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